Development of Simple Automatic Floor Polisher Robot using

Arduino
Li Hung Goon, Ahmad Nur Iman Md Isa, Chia How Choong, W.A.F.W. Othman*
#
School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 14300 Nibong Tebal, Pulau Pinang,
Malaysia

Corresponding E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract— In this work, we have built a low-cost and simple automatic floor polisher to ease the life of
modern living. This small cleaner and polisher robot is capable of the polishing and vacuuming the floor
automatically without colliding with the furniture or any other obstacles. This automatic floor cleaner can
be remotely switched on or off using a Bluetooth phone. The Bluetooth pairing method using a simple and
user-friendly user interface, compatible with third-party apps. This project is built using an Arduino
microcontroller, ultrasonic sensor, two PC fans, 4 DC motors, 2 discs, LEDs and a Bluetooth module. This
polisher robot floor cleaner is made up of 3R materials, small in size and eco-friendly.

Keywords— floor polisher; Arduino; Bluetooth pairing; robot

robots are large in size. Hence, it is hard to clean

INTRODUCTION
I. in small spaces such as under beds or sofa, corner
In today’s world, people are concerning about area and so on.
effective, automatic, and economic. The
competitive environment makes people busy with To solve the aforementioned problems, this
their working and to a certain extent, floor article proposes a low-cost automatic floor cleaner
cleaning in their house considered time-wasting. as an advantage for the human to clean the floor
However, not everyone is affordable to buy an within a small time period effectively. An
automatic floor cleaner due to its price. The ultrasonic sensor is used in this automatic floor
second factor that makes the automatic floor cleaner to detect the obstacles and objects in front
polisher and cleaner less popular in the market is of it. This sensor is controlled by the Arduino
the size. Some of them are big in size to have all controller. in addition, two DC motors are used for
unnecessary functions on it. the wheel motion while two fans are used to act as
a vacuum for cleaning.
In fact, most of us are usually using sweeper for
cleaning. From time to time, technologies come up Besides, another two DC motors are used to
and need to upgrade to ease human task. In clean the floor with the aid of a mechanical part
addition, most of the people are busy working and using old compact discs and cloth. A Bluetooth
they do not have enough time to clean their house. module is implemented to insert the remotely turn
Which in turn makes an automatic floor cleaner on and off function to the cleaner. LEDs are used
very attractive in the market. as a display function to the cleaner. Besides, we
used low cost and 3R materials such as old
However, most of the automatic floor cleaner in compact discs to build our project prototype.
the market are expensive and not everyone affords Furthermore, a short introductory video of this
to buy it. Furthermore, most of the floor cleaning work has been uploaded to YouTube with the link

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NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Libraries Resource Directory. We are listed under Research Associations category.
 International Journal of Engineering Creativity and Innovation, 2019, 1 (1), 17-23
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BddPdfV0A3
s.

II. METHODOLOGY
A. Components Descriptions
Arduino Uno as shows in Fig. 1 is a
microcontroller board based on the ATmega328P.
It has 14 digital input/output pins (of which 6 can Figure 2: Ultrasonic sensor
be used as PWM outputs), 6 analog inputs, a 16
MHz quartz crystal, a USB connection, a power The Bluetooth module as shows in Fig. 3 can
jack, an ICSP header and a reset button. It contains easily achieve serial wireless data transmission. Its
everything needed to support the microcontroller; operating frequency is among the most popular
simply connect it to a computer with a USB cable 2.4GHz ISM frequency band (i.e. Industrial,
or power it with a AC-to-DC adapter or battery to scientific and medical). It adopts Bluetooth
get started [1]. 2.0+EDR standard.

In Bluetooth 2.0, signal transmit time of

different devices stands at a 0.5 seconds interval
so that the workload of a Bluetooth chip can be
reduced substantially and more sleeping time can
be saved for Bluetooth. This module is set with
serial interface, which is easy to use and simplifies
the overall design/development cycle [19, 20].

Figure 1: Arduino Uno board

Arduino microcontroller is one of the favorite

microcontroller for most students and hobbyist.
This can be seen by many works using Arduino.
These works include the works where Arduino is
used for controlling fire-fighting robot [2],
humanoid robot [3-4], Arduino as the brain for Figure 3: Bluetooth module
follower robot [5~7], climbing robot [8~11], as
controller for CNC machine [12~16], and as the DC motors as shown in Fig. 4 can be powered
controller for smart farming [17]. from existing direct-current lighting power
distribution systems. A DC motor's speed can be
The Parallax PING))) ultrasonic distance sensor controlled over a wide range, using either a
as shows in Fig. 2 provides precise, non-contact variable supply voltage or by changing the
distance measurements from about 2 cm (0.8 strength of the current in its field windings [21].
inches) to 3 meters (3.3 yards). It is very easy to
connect to microcontrollers such as the BASIC
Stamp®, SX or Propeller chip, requiring only one
I/O pin. The PING))) sensor works by transmitting
an ultrasonic (well above human hearing range)
burst and providing an output pulse that
corresponds to the time required for the burst echo
to return to the sensor. By measuring the echo
pulse width, the distance to the target can easily be Figure 4: DC motor
calculated [18].

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 International Journal of Engineering Creativity and Innovation, 2019, 1 (1), 17-23
A light-emitting diode (LED) as shows in Fig. 5 power supply through a voltage regulator
is a two-lead semiconductor light source. It is a p– (LM7805).
n junction diode that emits light when activated. TABLE 1: COMPONENT LIST
When a suitable voltage is applied to the leads,
electrons are able to recombine with electron holes Components Quantity
within the device, releasing energy in the form of Arduino Uno 1
Bluetooth module (HC-05) 1
photons [22]. Ultrasonic sensor 1
DC motor 4
PC fan 2
Motor driver (L293D) 1
Relay switch 1
LED 1
Resistor (1kΩ) 1
Lithium ion battery 4
Voltage regulator (LM7805) 1
Heat sink 1
Figure 5: LED
Fig. 8 shows how Arduino is interfaced with the
PC Fan as shows in Fig. 6 can be found in the
electronic components. A Bluetooth module (HC-
CPU of a desktop. It is used to cool down the
05) works on serial communication. An Android
temperature of the CPU. We used it as a fan of the
phone with Bluetooth function is needed to use as
vacuum mechanism. The working principle of the
a remote control. User needs to download an
fan is similar to the working principle of the DC
Android Bluetooth controller apps from the
motor.
Google Play Store.

The Android app is designed to send serial data

to the Arduino Bluetooth module when a button is
pressed on the app. The Arduino Bluetooth
module will then sends it to the Arduino through
the TX pin of the Bluetooth module which
connected to RX pin of Arduino.

The RX pin of the Bluetooth module is

Figure 6: A PC cooling fan connected to the TX pin of the Arduino.
Furthermore, the ping pin of the ultrasonic sensor
is connected to pin 13 of the Arduino. The input
B. Bill of materials pins of the motor driver for the left motor (pin 2
Table 1 below shows the list of the components and pin 7) are connected to pin 2 and pin 3 on
that are needed to build an automatic floor Arduino board while the input pins of the motor
polisher proposed in this work. There are four DC for the right motor (pin 10 and pin 15) are
motors needed in this work, two for the connected to pin 4 and pin 5 on Arduino board.
locomotion of the robot, and another two for The left motor is connected to the output pins (pin
polishing mechanism. A two-channel motor driver 3 and pin 6) of the motor driver while the right
is also used to drive current to the DC motors to motor is connected to another output pins (pin 11
drive the robot. and pin 13) of the motor driver.
C. Schematic diagram
A relay switch is implemented to drive the DC
Fig. 7 shows the circuit diagram used in this motors for the polishing process and the PC fans.
work. As can be seen in Fig. 7, pin 2, 3, 4 and 5 The NO (normally open) pin of the relay switch is
from Arduino are connected to the motor driver connected to +12V. When the system is switched
(L293D) to drive the robot. Meanwhile, the DC ON, the relay will be activated and the COM of
motors for polishing are connected directly to the the relay will be connected to NO pin that

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 International Journal of Engineering Creativity and Innovation, 2019, 1 (1), 17-23

Figure 7: Schematic Diagram of Automatic Floor Cleaner

eventually gives power to PC fans and the DC read by the system. If the data received is “1”, pin
motors. After all the connection have been a pulse was sent to the pin 13 ( ping pin of the
connected, a complete program code is uploaded ultrasonic sensor), and then set pin 13 as an input,
to the Arduino microcontroller. time the duration required for the pulse wave to be
received by the ping pin. The duration is then
calculated by the system to get the distance
D. Program flow
between the obstacle and the ultrasonic sensor
First, all the pins were declared. After that, the itself.
system will standby to receive data from the serial
port. Once the data has been received, the data are

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 International Journal of Engineering Creativity and Innovation, 2019, 1 (1), 17-23

Figure 8: Schematic Diagram of Automatic Floor Cleaner

If the distance is higher than 20 cm, the signal TABLE 2: EFFECTIVE RANGE OF BLUETOOTH
will be sent into pins to drive the dc motor forward, CONNECTION
the system once again check the presence of serial
data, if it is absent, a waveform is sent out again to Range for bluetooth Connection
connection (meter) status
measure the distance until the distance is less than
9 Connected
20 cm, pin 3 and pin 4 are set HIGH, pin2 and 5 9.5 Connected
set LOW to take a turn for the dc motor. Then the 9.6 Disconnected
system will check the presence of the serial data. 10 Disconnected

When Serial data comes in, the system will go The ultrasonic sensor is used to detect the
back to read the data, If the data is “1”, the same distance of the obstacles. When the cleaner is
procedure will proceed. If the data is “0”, the moving forward towards an object or obstacle in
system will turn the pin 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 13 LOW, front of it, the ultrasonic sensor will detect it. If
which means, it is in OFF state. the object or obstacle distance is more than 20 cm,
then both left and right wheels will rotate in
forwarding direction. If the object or obstacle
III. RESULTS distance is less than 20 cm, then the right wheel
When the switch is turned ON via Bluetooth, motor will rotate in a backward direction while the
the data is transmitted to the automatic floor left wheel motor will keep rotating in forwarding
cleaner and convert the data through the Arduino direction. This makes the cleaning robot turn right
Uno to turn on the fans and dc motor of the when an obstacle was detected in front of it so that
sweepers and wheels that move the cleaner it will not collide with it and the cleaning robot
forward. If the switch is turn OFF via Bluetooth, will continue to move forward if there is no more
then the data transmitted to shut down the object or obstacle in front of it. Table 3 shows the
automatic floor cleaner and stay in the standby movement of the left and right wheel of the
mode. An LED was used for indication of ON or cleaning robot.
OFF condition. When the system is turned ON, the
LED will light up on the top of vacuum which TABLE 3: WHEEL MOTION OF THE AUTOMATIC FLOOR
indicates the system is turned ON. In case of OFF, POLISHER
the LED just close indicate the system is closed.
Through several experiments, we found the range Obstacle Left wheel Right wheel
distance motion motion
of Bluetooth connection. Table 2 shows the
> 20 cm Forward Forward
effective range of Bluetooth connection. < 20 cm Forward Reverse

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 International Journal of Engineering Creativity and Innovation, 2019, 1 (1), 17-23
IV. DISCUSSION added machine learning ability for the robots to
make sure every corner of the house can be
A. Ultrasonic sensor
cleaned.
The ultrasonic sensor used in this work is the
Parallax Ping Ultrasonic Range Sensor, which V.CONCLUSION
consists of 3 pins (Vcc, Gnd, and Signal). The The simple automatic floor polisher consists of
signal pin can act as output and input pin for the several important components which are Bluetooth
sensor. To detect a range of an object, we sent a module, ultrasonic sensor, motor driver, DC
signal to the signal pin, an ultrasonic wave will be motors and PC fans. Each component performs its
generated, then we set the signal pin as an input special characteristics in this automatic floor
pin, time the duration required for the waveform to polisher. The Bluetooth module was implemented
be detected by the ultrasonic sensor. To calculate to insert the remotely turn ON and OFF function
the range, we have to know the speed of sound to the automatic floor polisher and a LED was
which is 340m/s. We take the time required for the used as an indication for ON/OFF condition.
wave to be received after emitted, divide by two
(because the wave travels back and forth) and For the ultrasonic sensor, it was used to detect
times the speed of sounds, the distance can be the obstacles and objects in front of it so that it
known. would not collide with it. The motor driver was
used to act as little current amplifier to take a low-
B. Problem faced current control signal and then turn it into a
The power drawn from Arduino is not sufficient higher-current signal to drive the DC motors. Two
to supply power for all the ICs and motors used in DC motors were used for the wheel motion to
the proposed system. Solution: We introduced an move the robot while two DC motors were used
external power supply from the lithium-ion battery for the cleaning function with the aid of
to provide the extra power supply. mechanical part using old compact discs and cloth.
The transistor switch fails to operate the fans
and DC motors. Solution: We implemented a relay Furthermore, two PC fans and a net were used
switch to switch on a high voltage circuit to to act as a vacuum cleaner for the cleaning process.
operate the PC fans and the DC motors. A relay switch was used to switch ON the high
voltage circuit to operate the DC motors for the
cleaning process and the PC fans for the vacuum
C. Future directions function. Moreover, we have introduced external
In this paper, an Automatic Floor Polisher has power supply from Lithium-ion battery to provide
been successfully built. However the robot weight extra power supply for the DC motors.
heavier than expected, thus draw more power from
power supply to DC motors to run the robot. The In conclusion, a simple automatic floor polisher
PC fan required high voltage supply but it operates was built successfully and we have met all the
at low rpm, and torque, it is not an efficient objectives of this work. The automatic floor
vacuum system for the robot. polisher not only helps to develop cleanliness but
also to ease the life of modern people. Automatic
To further enhance the robot, lighter material floor polisher can still have further improvements
can be used such that it requires less power to to make people’ life more convenience in the
drive the motor. Furthermore, PC fans with low future.
power consumption but operate in high-speed
mode DC motor can be used, so that the vacuum DECLARATION
system can be improved. All authors have disclosed no conflicts of
interest, and authors would like to thank Universiti
Currently, the robots move randomly in the Sains Malaysia for supported the work by
arena to clean and polish the floor. In the future, Research University Grant Scheme (Grant number:
mapping function through Matlab can be 1001/PELECT/8014113).
introduced to draw the map of the house, with

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 International Journal of Engineering Creativity and Innovation, 2019, 1 (1), 17-23
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